


all that i want, is to wake up fine

by persephonerights



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: F/F, Found Family, Gen, Introspection, Mentions of homophobia, Self Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29475570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephonerights/pseuds/persephonerights
Summary: When Kristen was young she had questions, but learned younger than most that questions didn’t get you answers. They got you the glares from parents that you didn’t understand, and sulky silences that lasted longer than they should.Kristen was younger than most, too, when she learned a lot of hard truths that most adults go  their lives never having to learn. That love isn’t always as unconditional as you were promised, and that some people are always going to hate you for simply existing.Kristen Applebees was 10 when she asked her dad why gay people go to Hell.---(or, the projection is stored in the Kristen Applebees)fic title from Hard Times by Paramore
Relationships: Kristen Applebees & The Bad Kids, Kristen Applebees/Tracker O'Shaughnessey
Kudos: 20





	all that i want, is to wake up fine

**Author's Note:**

> i really hope you like this! i wasn't expecting to get this into Fantasy High and i definitely wasn't expecting to get as emotional about it as i have, so please enjoy my feelings about Kristen Applebees (also, there are some mentions of homophobia, but there's no slurs in this fic)

When Kristen was young she had questions, but learned younger than most that questions didn’t get you answers. They got you the glares from parents that you didn’t understand, and sulky silences that lasted longer than they should.

Kristen was younger than most, too, when she learned a lot of hard truths that most adults go their lives never having to learn. That love isn’t always as unconditional as you were promised, and that some people are always going to hate you for simply existing.

Kristen Applebees was 10 when she asked her dad why gay people go to Hell.

It was just Kristen and her dad in the car, driving back from a church event her mom couldn’t go to because she had to stay home with her little brothers, and Kristen was curious. Her dad always answered all of her questions, seemed happy to even.

This question was different. Her dad clammed up, went quiet for a second. Then he eventually answered, “Because it’s unnatural. It goes against what Helio stands for.”

Kristen furrowed her brow, “Oh.” On that TV show those two women holding hands didn’t seem unnatural...they seemed happy. The type of happy her parents were. 

“Why are you asking anyhow?”

“Oh, those two ladies on the TV just seemed really happy. I was just wondering why they were going to Hell,” Kristen said. She didn’t see any point in lying. Her dad answered her question and now she had an answer. Even if she didn’t know why that answer caused a pit to form in her stomach. 

Her answer seemed to upset her dad even more, his mouth was set in a firm line, “I told your mother she shouldn’t have been watching that show in front of you. You won’t have to see anything like that ever again kiddo.”

When they got home Kristen heard her dad and her mom get into an argument, and she never saw that TV show again. For the next few years anytime her family passed a gay couple holding hands, her father would pull her closer to his side, and she would drag her eyes away. She wanted to let them know she wasn’t staring at them because she hated them. She was staring at them because she wanted to  _ be _ them, even if she didn’t know it yet.

Kristen had an uncle, a distant one, so maybe he was her great-uncle? She wasn’t sure how all that worked, but she had this uncle who she never saw but everyone whispered about. At every family event he was absent, everyone knew why but no one would just tell her. Usually, she got what she wanted since she was “preordained”, but no one would tell her this secret.

And no one ever did, she figured it out for herself when she was 12. She was hiding away from all her family member’s questions, or being forced to help the women of her family in the kitchen, in the hallway closest to the dining room when she heard her grandma and her aunt talking. 

“I just wish he would see the light. That’s all it would take for him to come back,” her grandma said, and she could practically see her shaking her head while she said it. “That’s all it would take.”

Her aunt said, “I know, I know. Now I don’t hate him, I could never hate him. But I do hate what he’s doing. How could he just leave his entire family?”

“It truly is so sad. He could have settled down with a nice _ girl _ . None of this,” her grandma’s voice dropped low and Kristen had to strain to hear it, “gay thing. I could have had a nice sister-in-law.”

Her aunt sighed, “You know, love the sinner, hate the sin. I’ll keep him in my prayers, and hopefully one day he’ll come to his senses.”

Kristen didn’t get to hear the rest of the conversation, she had to run to her next hiding place when she heard one of her brother’s approaching. But she spent that entire night running over what she heard. 

Did her family really cast her uncle away because he was gay? Does everyone who is gay have to leave their family? Kristen could never leave her family, she loved her little brothers too much. And her parents. Why did this even matter to her? She wasn’t even gay. 

For such a long time, church was Kristen’s happy place. Everyone loved her there. They let her talk about things that mattered to her, and they let her volunteer wherever she wanted to and it felt like she was always surrounded by family there. 

She wasn’t sure when it stopped being her happy place, but eventually it did. When she became a teenager they wanted her to start going to youth group, even leading it sometimes. There were a lot of other teenagers there, and most of them had been compared to the Chosen One ever since she was born. She could feel their stares. She had to get up early and go to church before school started, and then spend time there after school, and it was starting to get exhausting. She felt like she was being pulled in a million directions and she was only 13.

In middle school they started learning the harder stuff, like real history, and algebra. The real history was a lot different than the fluffy history they teach you in elementary school. They talked about what  _ actually  _ happened, but Kristen got the feeling that it was still watered down. 

They had some really bad stuff to say about things that had been done in Helio’s name - but Helio loved her. He had chosen her. What did it say about her if someone who people did awful things in the name of had chosen her? 

She was only 13, so she put the question out of her mind and ignored what they taught her in class. She had already learned that asking the wrong questions gets you, and others, in trouble. 

Kristen was 14 when she started high school and met the Bad Kids. People who, at the time, she didn’t know were going to become her family when she left hers behind. She felt an immediate connection to people who weren't family or church members and it was...weird. She thought it was for proselytizing but, looking back on it, there was just something that connected all of them. 

Kirsten was also 14 the first time she died. She died, not peacefully in her sleep like she had always planned, but on the floor of her school cafeteria surrounded by people she just met. 

When she died she met Helio, who turned out to be a massive frat boy. This massive frat boy has decided how she has lived her life for the past 14 years? He’s controlled her and her family for so long, and he didn’t even catch her sneaking her principal into Heaven? This was who had chosen her and commanded so much power on Spyre?

She was shocked back to life, and despite having finally seen Heaven, she had more questions than she thought could ever be answered. She didn’t even care if these questions got her in trouble.

Now she had doubt in her mind, she had been raised to see doubt as the enemy, that all things were possible through Helio, but she didn’t feel like she was going to Hell. She just got back from  _ Heaven _ . The doubt almost felt comforting. Her questions felt validated, and when she added the Bad Kids to her prayer chat, she hesitated for the first time in a long time.

It felt like Kristen’s entire life got turned upside down in one day. All of a sudden she was surrounded by people who not only _encouraged_ her to ask questions but they tried to get her answers. Adaine even went to the library with her to look through all the religious books. She pulled books from the shelves, and when she dug into them every memory from middle school history just came flooding back. How did she just willfully ignore this shit? And when did she start saying shit?

Everyday she had more questions, but the other Bad Kids didn’t hate her for asking them the way that her parents, and other church members, did. In fact, they let her ramble on and on with doubt, and if they interrupted her to yell at her it wasn’t to shame her, it was because they needed to figure out something important and she needed to shut up.

Sometimes would catch herself prepping for the other Bad Kids to realize that she isn’t worth all the trouble - what good is a cleric if they don’t have a religion. However, they never left her behind. They asked for inspirational speeches before fights and they trusted her to heal them. They  _ liked _ her, and not because she was the Chosen One. They liked her because she made jokes they laughed at, and because they got to teach her all the funny stuff, like how to lie and curse. 

The Bad Kids’ and their parents were also teaching her that the way her parents talked to her wasn’t exactly normal. Sklonda loved Riz even when he made mistakes and went crazy about conspiracy theories. SandraLynn and Gilear loved Fig, even if they had their problems. In fact, even when Fig rebelled against them they still reached out to her and loved her. When Kristen asked questions that her parents called “questioning her faith” all she got was yelled at. Even Fig’s devil dad answered Kristen’s questions better than her own parents did. 

That feeling of knowing what other people’s parents were like sat in Kristen’s chest, for the first time she was around people she didn’t go to church with, and it felt like her world was opening up. But the world opening up wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. Her chest felt tight all the time, and falling asleep had never been harder.

Then Tracker kissed her.

The feeling in her chest didn’t get any looser, and she didn’t fall asleep any easier, but the pressure felt like it had purpose now. So much of her childhood and random moments of self hatred fell right into place. 

She knew if her parents knew she was gay they would hate her. Disown her even. Could she leave her little brothers? Would her brothers grow up to hate her? Or would her leaving shake something up for them? Would they grow up to ask the same questions that she was asking right now? Or would they just accept what her parents told them?

Now, when she was struggling to go to bed it wasn’t because she was asking herself too many questions just about Helio - now she was asking questions about herself. Questions she had buried for a long time, and chosen not to think about. After Tracker kissed her it was all she could think about, all the time. 

It had never felt so good to feel so shitty before.

Moving out of her parents house didn’t fix all of Kristen’s problems. She didn’t know why she expected it to, but it didn’t make every horrible feeling go away. She still randomly felt massive amounts of guilt when she remembers what she’s given up, but those down swings have highs of finally feeling freedom from living inside the pressure cooker that was her previous life.

She had felt her life turn around in such a massive way, but her friends had her surrounded, with love and chaos that made her feel more supported than she ever was as a kid. Sometimes she had to remind herself, when she got sad, that her parents had loved a version of her that wasn’t the real her. That when she showed them the real her they turned her away. 

Freedom came with a cost though, and she felt it. She had lost Helio, but she was going to find something out there that cared as much as she did. There was something out there that was good. All she had to do was find it. Not everyone on the planet was like her parents, some of them were like her friends, they were like Tracker and Jawbone. They cared with every fiber of their being for other people, even when they didn’t deserve it. 

Kristen had a lot of experience of caring for other people who didn’t deserve it. And she wasn’t about to stop. People who did bad things deserved a second chance, not a second chance granted by Helio, but just someone reaching a hand down and telling them they could choose to get better. All they had to do was accept the hand. 

Kristen knew her life was never going to be perfect, and that the look on her parents’ faces as they pulled spears on her would be seared in her mind forever, but she would be okay. She would have bad days, sure, and they would be bad, but she had her friends and Tracker to support her. They had become her family. 

Coming out wasn’t easy but she had never felt more herself, and hopefully one day her brothers would come and find her, once they had escaped from her parents too. As time went on she would grow, and become happier, and accept this new life for herself. And she would accept it while kicking monster ass with her kickass best friends. 

**Author's Note:**

> i really hope you liked it!! that first scene is actually based on a convo i had between me and my dad when i was 10 lmao, more dramatized of course
> 
> feel free to follow me on [tumblr](gukgaksupremacy.tumblr.com)!! i've been rambling about fantasy high for a few days now and am almost done with season 1 of the unsleeping city


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